Living: Hill of Beans

Reagan's favorite candy

Except at Easter, when they cling glutinously to countless baskets of green plastic grass, jelly beans have never ranked high in the American sweet-tooth sweepstakes. Now, with Ronald Reagan in the White House, they seem fated to achieve the luster that the praline of sugar and nuts enjoyed in the court of France's Louis XIV.* Jelly bean consumption is jumping, not only in the capital but throughout the rest of the country as well.

The type most esteemed by the President is brand-named Jelly Belly, which —addicts vow—is to the ordinary jelly bean what foie gras is to liverwurst. About...

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